Peter Rhodes on Arnhem, snow-cycling and plenty of snouts in the trough
If there's one thing sharper than a four-letter word, it's a four-word letter. Like this one, from a Daily Telegraph reader on the Downing Street gifts scandal and earlier Tory sleaze: “Same trough, different snouts.”
This week marks the 80th anniversary of the ill-starred battle of Arnhem in northern Holland. In 1984, I was there for the 40th. Like so many battlefield pilgrimages with old soldiers, it was a blend of goodwill, sadness and humour, punctuated with unexpected moments of intense poignancy and grotesque horror.
As when we reached the junction where one group of paras had seen their pal struck by a German bullet which ignited his phosphorous bomb. They could no nothing but watch as he burned to death. When people say: “Great-grandad never talked about the war,” they should perhaps ask themselves, how can anyone introduce their memory of the hideous death pyre of a comrade into a peacetime family chat?
